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Photonics
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Photonics is the science of generating, controlling, and detecting photons, particularly in the visible and near infra-red spectrum, but also extending to the ultraviolet (0.2 - 0.35 µm wavelength), long-wave infrared (8 - 12 µm wavelength), and far-infrared/THz portion of the spectrum (e.g., 2-4 THz corresponding to 75-150 µm wavelength) where today quantum cascade lasers are being actively developed. Photonics is an outgrowth of the first practical semiconductor light emitters invented in the early 1960s at General Electric, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, IBM, and RCA and made practical by Zhores Alferov and Dmitri Z. Garbuzov and collaborators working at the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute and almost simultaneously by Izuo Hayashi and Mort Panish working at Bell Telephone Laboratories.
Just as applications of electronics have expanded dramatically since the first transistor was invented in 1948, the unique applications of photonics continue to emerge. Those which are established as economically important applications for semiconductor photonic devices include optical data recording, fiber optic telecommunications, laser printing (based on xerography), displays, and optical pumping of high-power lasers. The potential applications of photonics are virtually unlimited and include chemical synthesis, medical diagnostics, on-chip data communication, laser defense, and fusion energy to name several interesting additional examples.
Relationship to other fields Classical optics Photonics is closely related to optics. However optics preceded the discovery that light is quantized (when the photoelectric effect was explained by Albert Einstein in 1905). The tools of optics are the refracting lens, the reflecting mirror, and various optical components which were known prior to 1900. The key tenets of classical optics, such as Huygens Principle, the Maxwell Equations, and wave equations, do not depend on quantum properties of light.
Emerging fields Photonics also relates to the emerging science of quantum information in those cases where it employs photonic methods. Other emerging fields include opto-atomics in which devices integrate both photonic and atomic devices for applications such as precision timekeeping, navigation, and metrology. Another emerging field is polaritonics which differs with photonics in that the fundamental information carrier is a phonon-polariton, which is a mixture of photons and phonons, and operates in the range of frequencies from 300 gigahertz to approximately 10 terahertz.
Overview of photonics research The science of photonics includes the emission, transmission, amplification, detection, modulation, and switching of light.
Photonic devices include optoelectronic devices such as lasers and photodetectors, as well as optical fiber, photonic crystals, planar waveguides, and other passive optical elements.
Applications of photonics include light detection, telecommunications, information processing, illumination, metrology, spectroscopy, holography, medicine (surgery, vision correction, endoscopy, health monitoring), military technology, laser material processing, visual art, biophotonics, agriculture and robotics.
History of photonics Photonics as a field really began in 1960, with the invention of the laser, and the laser diode followed in the 1970s by the development of optical fibers as a medium for transmitting information using light beams, and the Erbium-doped fiber amplifier. These inventions formed the basis for the telecommunications revolution of the late 20th century, and provided the infrastructure for the internet.
Historically, the term photonics only came into common use among the scientific community in the 1980s as fiber optic transmission of electronic data was adopted widely by telecommunications network operators (although it had earlier been coined). At that time, the term was adopted widely within Bell Laboratories. Its use was confirmed when the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society established an archival journal named Photonics Technology Letters at the end of the 1980s.
During the period leading up to the dot-com crash circa 2001, photonics as a field was largely focused on telecommunications. However, photonics covers a huge range of science and technology applications, including:
- laser manufacturing,
- biological and chemical sensing,
- medical diagnostics and therapy,
- display technology,
- optical computing.
Various non-telecom photonics applications exhibit a strong growth particularly since the dot-com crash, partly because many companies have been looking for new application areas quite successfully. A huge further growth of photonics can be expected for the case that the current development of silicon photonics will be successful.
Applications of Photonics- Consumer Equipment: Barcode scanner, printer, CD/DVD/Blu-ray devices, remote control devices
- Telecommunications: Optical fiber communications , Optical Down converter to Microwave
- Medicine: correction of poor eyesight, laser surgery, surgical endoscopy, tattoo removal
- Industrial manufacturing: the use of lasers for welding, drilling, cutting, and various kinds of surface modification
- Construction: laser levelling, laser rangefinding, smart structures
- Aviation: photonic gyroscopes lacking any moving parts
- Military: IR sensors, command and control, navigation, search and rescue, mine laying and detection
- Entertainment: laser shows, beam effects, holographic art
- Information processing
- Metrology: time and frequency measurements, rangefinding
- Photonic computing: clock distribution and communication between computers, circuit boards, or within optoelectronic integrated circuits; in the future: quantum computing
Periodicals
Sources
See also
WiktionaryExternal links - - Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems
- - Optical Society of America
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